The pragmatics of morphological negation: pejorative and euphemistic uses of the prefix non- in French
The pragmatics of morphological negation: pejorative and euphemistic uses of the prefix non- in French

Summary/Abstract: In this paper I examine a particular type of morphological negation in French, namely non- prefixation on nominal bases (e.g. non-violence ‘nonviolence’). Drawing on a wide range of authentic examples from the Trésor de la Langue Française informatisé (TLFi), the French literary database Frantext and the internet, I show that although the basic meaning of non- prefixation is negation, the nouns prefixed by non- (abbreviated as [non-N]N) may carry an additional nuance, which can be pejorative or euphemistic; hence the hypothesis defended in this paper that the prefix non- can also serve pragmatic purposes. After having briefly described the morphological and semantic variety of nominal lexemes which can be the input of non- prefixation, I show that [non-N]N can have three different readings, namely what I call the “complementary” interpretation (e.g. les Italiens et les non-Italiens aiment la cuisine italienne ‘Italians and non-Italians like Italian cuisine’), the “ontological” interpretation (e.g. Toute sa vie durant, Gandhi est demeuré convaincu du bien-fondé de la non-violence ‘For all his life, Gandhi was convinced of the legitimacy of nonviolence’), and the “contrary interpretation” (e.g. Les fleurs, je m’en fiche. Serais-je une non-femme? ‘Flowers, I don’t care! Could I be a nonwoman?). In the second section, I describe the pejorative and euphemistic uses of [non-N]N. The pejorative uses have been noticed by several authors (a.o. Gaatone 1971, 1987, Di Sciullo and Tremblay 1993, 1996 for French, Zimmer 1964, Algeo 1971, Bauer 1983, Horn 1989 for English); I show that these uses arise when the [non-N]N have a contrary interpretation and that they are quite frequent. I also emphasize the importance of the discourse context compared to the semantics of the base noun. Then I address the euphemistic uses of [non-N]N, which are linked to the ontological interpretation, and which are more constrained and thus less frequent; I note that these uses function almost as a politeness device. The fourth section provides an attempt to draw a parallel between certain uses of [non-N]N and the polemic and metalinguistic uses of sentential negation, as they have been described by Ducrot (1980, 1984) and Horn (1985, 1989).

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